BonziBUDDY Alternatives

BonziBUDDY

BonziBuddy, stylized as BonziBUDDY, was a desktop assistant made by Joe and Jay Bonzi. Upon a user's choice the on-screen agent would share jokes and facts, manage downloading using its download manager, sing songs and other functions.

The software used Microsoft Agent technology similar to Office Assistant, and originally sported Peedy, a green parrot and one of the characters available with Microsoft Agent. Later versions of BonziBuddy featured its own character: Bonzi, the purple gorilla. The program also used a text to speech voice to interact with the user. The voice was called Sydney and taken from an old Lernout & Hauspie Microsoft Speech API 4.0 package. It is often referred to in some software as Adult Male #2.

Some versions of the software were described as spyware. BonziBuddy was discontinued in 2004 after the company behind it faced lawsuits regarding the software and was ordered to pay fines. Bonzi's website remained open after the discontinuation of BonziBuddy, but was later discontinued at the end of 2008.